With attrition rates at a 30-year low, the USPTO’s commissioner for patents is confident she’ll be able to retain the skilled professionals she’ll need to guide the Office effectively into a new era of patent law

Focarino aims to reduce patent pendency to 10 months
by 2015

Peggy Focarino has four children, a husband and two
Newfoundlands – but she still somehow finds time to
make her own homemade wine ("all kinds except chardonnay; we
don't like chardonnay", says the USPTO's commissioner for
patents). And it's lucky that she likes being kept busy,
because Focarino also happens to be in charge of patent
operations during one of the most
crucial transitions in the US patent system since its
inception.

In addition to hiring 1,500 patent examiners by the start of
the new fiscal year and analysing comments on 20 different
provisions of the
America Invents Act before promulgating final rules for
each, Focarino will be participating in road shows, opening the
USPTO's first satellite office in Detroit, continuing to
whittle down the backlog of patent applications and attempting
to give examiners clearer guidance on patentable subject matter
after
Mayo v Prometheus – and much of that must be
done by September this year or sooner.

As head of patents, one of Focarino's key responsibilities
will be making sure the Detroit office gets off to a good
start. The
Elijah J McCoy satellite patent office will be the test
case for three additional satellite offices to be opened by
2014 in Dallas, San Jose and Denver. The expansion means there
will be USPTO facilities in each of the four major US time
zones. "This is a great opportunity," says
Focarino.

"Examiners are
leaving the Office at a lower rate than any time in the
last 30 years"

Hiring in Detroit was easy – "the response was
overwhelming" – but at the main headquarters in
Alexandria, Virginia things have been a bit tougher. Because of
changes made by the US Office of
Personnel Management (OPM) to the USPTO's hiring authority,
it hasn't been as easy for the Office to reach recent college
graduates, which has made it more difficult to generate a
qualified list of applicants. But Focarino says the Office is
now around that bend. "We've hired 1,100 examiners so far this
year and the goal is 1,500, so I'm pretty confident we're going
to meet that," she says.

Those hires will go a long way toward reducing the
backlog and decreasing pendency (the goal is 10 months to a
first action by 2015), as will continuing to reduce the
attrition rate. According to Focarino, examiners are leaving
the Office at a lower rate (3.3%) than any time in the last 30
years, which means that "7,300 examiners are getting more and
more experience". Attrition rates have been as high as 14% in
2000 and as low as 4.6% in 1982, according to the Office.

But Focarino's focus in the post-AIA era will for the first
time be on more than just administrative matters, and this may
be how her role will change the most. "My career has been very
operations-focused to this point, so I think just being able to
deal with the stakeholder community, which has a whole range of
interests, and making sure to have interactions with everyone
and strike the right balance is something new."

Seven things you should know
about the Detroit USPTO

Experienced examiners: All of
the examiners in Detroit have IP experience. Some are
former examiners, while others have been practising
in law firms. All have at least one year of patent
prosecution experience. "It’s a total
paradigm shift for us to be able to start this effort
with employees who have intimate knowledge of the
Office," says Focarino.

Telework: Detroit examiners will
be eligible to work remotely under the
Office’s telework programme after two
years of service. However, according to Focarino that
could change: "That threshold for eligibility could
change for people who have experience – they
may be able to work remotely sooner."

Specialisation: The Detroit
office will handle only electrical and mechanical
patent applications. "The lowest growth overall is in
the chemical area," says Focarino. "It’s
not where the greatest need is." But that
isn’t set in stone either. "We always
look at what’s happening and adjust
hiring as necessary."

Board of Appeals: There will be
11 administrative law judges in Detroit. That is up
from the projected six the USPTO initially planned to
hire. "The response to the vacancy announcement was
overwhelming," says Focarino.

Filing: All patent applications
will continue to be filed through the main Alexandria
office and randomly allocated to Detroit examiners,
so Detroit area applicants still can’t
necessarily count on meeting in person with the
examiner handling their case. "However, there will be
a public search facility present in Detroit for prior
art searches and an interview room with video
conferencing equipment to collaborate with examiners
in Alexandria or Detroit, or remotely," says
Focarino.

Who’s in charge:
Long-time supervisory patent examiner Robin Evans
will be in charge of administrative operations in
Detroit, but examiners will be trained and managed by
SPEs in Alexandria, and still report to Focarino and
Kappos.

Training: Training will largely
be conducted remotely. "There will be on-site
management and training, but also virtual connection
with the supervisors in Alexandria," says Focarino.
"A lot of the training will be done via webcasts with
training in Alexandria.